Is the Opioid Epidemic Too Big for This Little Device?

They call Arrand Johnston the Evidence Man, but he says the evidence isn’t what it used to be. Johnston is a narcotics detective in Fort Wayne, Ind., assigned to identify the various pills, powders, and crystals his fellow police officers seize the night before. In the room where he works, there’s a pinned reference poster of commonly abused pills, a panoply of sizes, shapes, and pastel colors. The poster, Johnston says, is almost obsolete in the age of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s struck terror in police departments because of its extreme toxicity and powdery resemblance to more pedestrian drugs.

Police departments across the U.S., including in Fort Wayne, are seeing a massive spike